First conducted in 1991, the FIU Cuba Poll is the longest running research project tracking the opinions of the Cuban-American community in South Florida. From the beginning, Guillermo J. Grenier and Hugh Gladwin, faculty members in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, have directed the survey. The poll was designed to measure the views of Cuban Americans about U.S. policy options toward Cuba. The consistency of some of the responses, as well as the shift in others, provides the most complete picture of Cuban-American political attitudes over time.

The FIU Cuba Poll is administered to randomly selected Cuban-American residents of Miami-Dade County, Florida. The sample is generated from telephone exchanges using standard random-digit-dialing procedures that ensure that each phone number has an equal chance of being chosen for the sample. Interviews are conducted with respondents who have both landline phones and cell phones. The large size of the sample allows for a complete demographic analysis of the Cuban-American population in Miami-Dade County. Bilingual interviewers conduct the survey in Spanish and English.

The Cuban Research Institute, the Institute for Public Opinion Research, the Center for Labor Research and Studies, and the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies have cosponsored the FIU Cuba Poll in the past. The Brookings Institution, the Cuba Study Group, the Ford Foundation, The Miami Herald, NBC 6, the Open Society Foundations, the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and the Trimpa Group have funded the poll.